014: Alternate Routes

I woke up this morning with the inexplicable urge to talk about Aerosmith. As you may or may not have surmised from this blog, I have a tendency to go on at length especially when I think there's no reason anyone should be listening, or if they are, that they would care. So after leaving my bedroom, hearing the morning DJ alluding to "Dream On" coming on after the break, all I could think about was Aerosmith, my favourite band, a fact that I have had to defend oftentimes in my travels to self-professed music geeks who don't understand that sometimes a song about fucking is the most insightful statement that can be made.

It's not really that inexplicable. The curious side-effect of their half-a-breakup (when the most visible/important/interesting member of your group decides to take a break, you're pretty much broken up) is that they're getting a lot of radio play and a lot of coverage from news outlets likely to cover such things.

I used to really look forward to Aerosmith's next album. They haven't recorded anything important since 2003's Honking on Bobo, an album of blues rockers mostly from way back. They haven't recorded an album of original material since the baffling (yet I maintain often terrific) Just Push Play. That was in 2001. They've had a new album in the works forever, but it might never materialize because Steven Tyler decided to just up and leave. If it does, it'll probably be with whomever they end up picking as the new vocalist, if they ever do. Big shoes to fill.

In the history of rock and roll there are exactly two examples of a rock band replacing their lead singer and it not sucking. The first was AC/DC, which replaced the deceased Bon Scott with Brian Johnson. Johnson was Scott's hand-picked replacement, as he believed, rightly, that he would not live past 1980. The second was Sammy Hagar replacing David Lee Roth in Van Halen, which some people accepted, but many didn't, probably because Roth's flashy vocal style contrasted with Van Halen's tight technical playing, whereas Hagar's vocals were like oatmeal. Palatable but not special. In my humble opinion, that is.

On the failures side, you can take your pick. Many, many bands who were already halfway or further toward obscurity. INXS and its much-abused relationship with JD Fortune. Ronnie James Dio in Sabbath. The third guy who fronted Van Halen. Judas Priest. Paul Rodgers front Queen mainly so that Queen can continue to tour, because hey, it's Queen. But this is supposed to be about Aerosmith.

I convinced myself to stop being excited about their theoretical new album and more curious. In some ways it was being conceived of as a back-to-the-past affair, a real rock album unlike their recent (well, it's all relative) output. And as much as I want to hear that, I fear what the actual product would sound like. So I'm happy with it staying as a hypothetical.

I was reading some interviews with the remaining bandmembers and their former A&R guy John Kalodner. Kalodner, no slouch in the music business, mocked the retro-rock premise, because he was adamant that you can't go back. He boasted about how he managed to convince Bon Jovi to hook up with Nashville and was thus, in an existential kind of way, was responsible for their recent swerve toward the middle of the road. It was that quote that really sparked something in me; and that something was "Good."

Aerosmith is too good a band, too cool, and too much themselves to produce the kind of radio-friendly crap Bon Jovi puts out. Lost Highway? We Weren't Born to Follow? Are you shitting me? Dreck. And Bon Jovi was never that great a band to begin with but they know exactly what kind of music they want to be pushing on the poor public.

I'm not saying they have a pure spirit of rock and roll. They recorded fuckin "Don't Wanna Miss a Thing," and "Crazy" and "Angel" and all of those, and that's probably what people are rolling their eyes at when I say they're my favourite band. But the Aerosmtih I like -- the Aerosmith that anybody likes -- isn't the purveyor of feelingless musical wallpaper like that. My Aerosmith is the Aerosmith of Train Kept A Rollin and Walk this Way and Janie's Got a Gun. Of Back in the Saddle and Hangman Jury.

Say what you will abut Just Push Play. If it was a terrible album, at least it didn't sound anything like any other Aerosmtih album, or anything else that I can ever remember hearing. Even Jaded, that far-too-radio-calculated hit single, was built around a weird snakey jangly Eastern-sounding guitar riff that resembles nothing else from the time. You probably haven't heard the rest of the album, but the thing it reminds me most of (apart from my extremely awkward preteen years) is Lady Gaga. And she was still 7 years away. Like I said, whether the resemblance (if anyone else hears it) is a good thing, that's up to your personal taste. But if they suck, it's because they were doing something interesting. Their worst albums are still very interesting to listen to -- Nine Lives, Rock in a Hard Place. If Just Push Play had been some anonymous band's debut album, I really think people would've lost their shit over it. But it was made by a band with the expectations and the baggage of 30 years in the business and a notoriously neophobic fanbase.

Effectively, the rupture in the band hinges on the clash between the double-nature of Aerosmith. The potential to be a cash-cow radio-ready act with broad appeal, and the desire to keep playing hard rock like they're a bunch of 22-year-olds in the garage salivating over a sweet pair of tits. The people in a position to profit want them to be the former. For the most part they do their best to be the latter.

Anyway. I've always dug them because I sensed a sort of authenticity, aside from the fact that they've been more than willing to follow the money over the years, they know what they're about. They're not the kind of band that goes to Nashville to cut a phony country album to appeal to the Keith Urban set. All their puzzling stylistic flights (from the out-of-era Indian tones of Nine Lines to the out-of-era psychedelia of Rock inn a Hard Place to the somewhat-ahead-of-time dancerock flashes of Just Push Play) have felt more or less like natural extensions of their clash between authenticity and commercial viability. They are the great American rock dream run amok. They're not a half-decent, proficient, acceptable staple like Foreigner or Boston. They're not known for their inventiveness either, which is why they've not run out of gas until now, because they have been able to keep it their way, and all the horns and synths and shit on Pump don't get in the way of that, only enhance it. They only look dumb because their music grabs you with its immediacy even after it's been out there for 30 years. Aside from Satisfaction, how many rock singles are as prescient about music's future as Walk This Way?

Anyway. That's half my rant. it's badly organized. My lfie hasn't been terribly interesting lately, although if I remember tomorrow I'll share more random thoughts about work and stuff. My mission, while Brando is away in England starting tomorrow, is to straightn this place out. We'll see.

Also, writing. Gah.

Well, I wrote this, it oughtta do for now. Now I've got to get some sleep. Early day tomorrow, though not as early as Brando's. His flgith is at 9, soi he's up at 6, approximately 6.5 hours before he usually gets up, by my count.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto